1

The British Empire, Ecology and Famines in Late 19th

Century Central India

By

Laxman D. Satya

Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania

More than thirty million famine related deaths occurred in British India between

1870 and 1910, a phenomenon Mike Davis in his recent book has called the “Late

Victorian Holocaust.”1 The Deccan region of central India was the worst victim of these

famines. This paper will analyze the official ideology, the reasons, and consequences of

these famines.

On the Question of Theory:

Just as the Europeans justified the Atlantic slave trade in terms of civilizing the

savage, Christianizing the heathen, and making the barbarian productive through a work

ethic based on reason, so was the British imperialist project in India and Asia.2 Here the

so-called „tropics‟ were condemned as naturally unhealthy, diseased and famine prone.3

Overtly implying that somehow European weather, climate and geographical

environment was healthier than the conquered territories.4 But the most influential

ideology behind western imperialism was the classical political economy propounded by

Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations. Accordingly, a laissez-faire doctrine of market

capitalism was introduced in the late 18th

century, which guided the European imperialist

project whereby government interference in the economy was objected to even in the face

of acute crisis like the famine. Although it should be noted here, this market capitalism

was in fact imposed on conquered territories with the might of European gunboats and

arms. However, to this doctrine was later added the Malthusian theory of population

whereby famine was regarded as a natural check to over population, relieving the state

2

and government from the responsibility of expenditure on relief.5 However, the driving

ideas behind the Indian Famine Commission Reports of the 19th

century were those of

Jeremy Bentham. The utilitarian principle that relief should be bitterly punitive in order

to discourage dependence upon the government was purely Benthamite. The reports

relieved the British government of India any responsibility for the horrific mortality. It

was asserted that the cheap famine labour could be fruitfully used in modernizing

projects such as the railways, road construction, and repair of tanks, stone and masonry

works, etc. The famine reports further held that the calamity was caused by natural

phenomenon and that human agencies have no control over it. The staunch Benthamite

cronies like James Mill and his son John Stuart Mill also supported this utilitarian

orthodoxy6 of the East India Company and the British Empire after 1857.

All the British imperial viceroys, governors, and proconsuls like Lytton, Temple,

Elgin, and Curzon strongly adhered to the doctrine that it was the climate and failure of

rains that caused failure of crops and famine. It was believed that the empire had to be

governed for revenues and not expenditure. And any act that would influence the prices

of grains such as charity was to be either strictly monitored or discouraged. Even in the

face of acute distress, relief had to be punitive and conditional. So the „Temple Wage‟

propounded by Sir Richard Temple, a staunch laissez faire doctrinaire on government

famine relief was set at only 16-22 oz of food or 1-2 annas with a minimum of 9-10 hours

of work per day. The whole idea was to strongly discourage dependence on government

relief. Viceroy Lytton (in late 1870s) vehemently supported the Temple wage of below

minimum while Curzon (in early 1900s) implemented a tight press censorship to prevent

Indian nationalists from making a political capital out of the macabre famine of 1899-

3

1900.7 Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze in their study have suggested that the reasons why

famines suddenly seized with the end of British Empire (post-1947) was not so much

because the nationalist government was more benevolent but because the free press and

public opinion put constant pressure on the government to respond. This kind of pressure

could not be exerted under conditions of colonial subjection.8

An Examination into the Nature and Causes of Famines:

The scholars of ancient and medieval India like H.D. Sankhalia, D.D. Kosambi,

Romila Thapar, D. N. Jha, R.S. Sharma, Irfan Habib and others have observed that the

South Asian society had always been shaped and reshaped by a close interaction between

pastoral nomads, agriculturists, and forest dwellers.9 Sumit Guha in his recent book has

further elaborated this observation by stating that the boundary between the three

environmental regions, i.e., forests, grazing grounds, and cultivated fields had always

been fluid before the advent of British rule. And this fluidity also extended to

occupational flexibility whereby people acquired skills in accordance with the political

economy and social culture of the times.10

However, this fluidity and flexibility

threatened the colonial state‟s greed for revenues and desire for territorial expansion. The

fluid boundaries had to be frozen and occupational flexibility had to be put into the

straightjacket category of caste for better control and management of the empire and its

subjects.11

So the first order of business for the colonial state was to conduct extensive land

survey and settlement operations while the process of empire building was in progress

during the nineteenth century.12

The following table shows the movement of cultivated

4

and wasteland acreages as a result of British survey and settlement operations in six

selected districts of Central India collectively called Berar.

Table 1

The movement of cultivated and uncultivated acreages in Berar by District:

1869-70 to 1902-03

1869-1870

District Cultivated % of Cultivated Unoccupied/ % of unoccupied Total

acres to total acres waste acres to total acres acres

Ellichpur 630,954 35.1 414,808 23 1,795,877

Amraoti 637,831 38.3 863,034 35.2 2,446,198

Wun 519,554 19.1 792,324 29.2 2,708,480

Akola 1,380,882 80.0 193,001 11.1 1,726,073

Buldana 1,253,173 71.4 308,427 17.5 1,753,158

Basim 576,715 49.8 340,937 29.4 1,155,909

Total 5,299,109 45.7 2,912,531 25.1 11,585,695

1901-1902

Ellichpur 660,134 39.4 33,154 1.9 1,674,785

Amraoti 1,505,474 85.2 120 0.006 1,765,896

Wun 1,669,842 66.5 133,897 5.3 2,509,626

Akola 1,454,121 84.8 6,937 0.4 1,714,459

Buldana 1,468,973 81.7 6,775 0.3 1,797,901

Basim 1,301,321 68.7 21,914 1.1 1,893,594

Total 8,059,865 70.9 202,797 1.7 11,356,261

1902-1903

Total 8,101,739 71.3 181,646 1.6 11,356,181

Sources: Administration Report by the Resident at Hyderabad including a Report on the Administration of

the Hyderabad Assigned Districts, for the year 1869-70. Hyderabad: Residency Government Press. Para

281; Report on the Administration of the Hyderabad Assigned Districts for the year 1901-02. Hyderabad:

Residency Government Press, 1902. para 9; and Report on the Administration of the Hyderabad Assigned

Districts for the year 1902-1903. Hyderabad: Residency Press, 1903. para 65.

It can be noticed from the above table that as the land survey and settlement operations

progressed, cultivated acreage dramatically increased from 45.7% to 71.3% of the total

acreage. The result of this was a simultaneous decline in the unoccupied areas to the

5

point of total extinction. This meant that the grazing lands and common grounds

virtually disappeared under the onslaught of colonial commercialization. The official

term for designating such areas was „wastelands.‟ For the British this meant lands that

did not generate revenues, hence uneconomic and therefore the need to make it

productive and economic by putting it under the plough. But for people in the villages,

these lands were a part of their daily life and survival in times of calamities such as

famine and drought. Its disappearance had serious repercussions. In the most populated

plain districts of Amraoti, Akola, and Buldana, the wastelands completely disappeared

falling under 1%. In other districts also, it fell below 2%. In Wun district it stood at

about 5%. Every district experienced the problem of space and overcrowding. Amraoti

and Akola district suffered the worst because of the topography. When cotton cultivation

expanded in the 1860s, these two districts were the very first to be denuded of all tree and

forest cover. Most of the railways passed through these two districts. The population

density got high and the ravage of drought, famine, disease, and death became intense.13

The Empire‟s voracious appetite for revenues targeted the mobile people to

sedentarize. The pressure of colonial institutions like the police, law and courts were

employed to coerce pastoral nomads and forest dwellers to settle on the land and take up

agriculture. Further pressure of imperial revenues forced pastures and common lands

under the plough. Neeladri Bhattacharya in his study of the Punjab pastoralists shows

how the extension of British control through punitive grazing taxes hit the transhumance

pastoral nomads while depriving the peasantry of the traditional grazing runs and

common lands.14

Thus the extension of the imperial arm deprived pastoralists of their

main source of survival while survey operations extended and froze the boundaries of

6

agriculture. Revenue and Agriculture Department was the largest and the most organized

executive arm of the British Empire in India. In fact it extracted more then 85% of the

imperial revenues and made sure that agriculture closed boundary with forests. It also

encouraged cash crop cultivation and helped connect India to the London based world

economy.15

While commercialization of land and agriculture threatened the existence of

pastoral nomads, control over forests put pressure on forest dwellers. Writing in the

context of Central India, Mahesh Rangarajan has aptly described the colonial

commercialization of timber and other resources as „fencing the forest.‟16

From time

immemorial everyone in the subcontinent had depended on forest and common land

resources for their daily survival. According to Neil Charlesworth, the ratio of plough

cattle to land in the Deccan plateau heavily depended on the availability of these

resources.17

As mentioned before, the people also fell back on these resources in times of

drought, famine and other natural calamities. Ramachandra Guha in a recent article has

suggested that historically, forests in South Asia had been under the management of local

society and utilized as a common property resource.18

The forest dwellers and plains

agriculturists had always exchanged goods and services on balance.19

The colonial

Forest Department took control of forests and began putting restrictions on people‟s

access to its resources through a series of Forest Acts and Laws beginning 1866.20

The

forest dwellers were gradually pushed out of their natural habitat and dhya (slash and

burn agriculture) was prohibited. The forests were taken over and declared government

reserves in order to serve the needs of imperial railways and the military.21

The

commercialization of forest resources such as wood, leaf, manure, grass, fodder, wild

7

grains, fruits, roots, nuts, honey, vegetables, flowers, medicinal herbs, gums, plants,

spices, lac, game, etc., removed the famine and drought cushion on which the people had

traditionally relied in times of crisis. According to the well known famine scholar B.M.

Bhatia, this resulted in general environmental deterioration that transformed minor

calamities into disastrous events taking millions of lives.22

Bipan Chandra, Sumit Sarkar, and Amiya Bagchi in their studies have shown that

the lack of economic diversity was the reason for India‟s backwardness and poverty

under the British Empire. Society was restrained to remain agrarian and feudal. The

British imperial policies prevented the transformation of Indian economy from agrarian

to industrial by skimming off the raw material and revenues without plowing anything

back in return. Trapped in this classical political economy of the British Raj, India

exported raw material and consumed finished goods. State investments mostly went into

maintaining the institutions of control like the vast army, police, bureaucracy, and the

espionage network of the Empire. Very little was made available for the development of

human capital resource or even the economic infrastructure that would benefit the general

populace. The colonial state and local moneylenders became parasitic classes that were

not interested in either economic development or improving the material condition of the

peasantry. Commercial crops not only encroached on food grains but pushed peasants

into a debt cycle from which it was impossible to get out because the primary producer

lost control over the crops. The burden of high state revenue demand and government

refusal to remit even in times of famine made the suffering of the people intense and

death difficult to allude.23

8

During the great famine of 1877-78, a noted Victorian journalist William Digby

observed that the root causes of famines in India was railways and markets. Accordingly,

the railways carried famine to grain surplus areas through artificial price inflation in the

face of any government check or control.24

Many studies since then have shown that

there was never a shortage of food grains even in years of official famines. The problem

was with grain prices. They were so high that the people could not afford to buy it.25

However, one thing remained unchanged in British India and that was the wages of

labourers.26

The wage stagnation and very little movement in per capita income made

food grains beyond the reach of ordinary persons trying to eke out a living off their

labour. The following table explains this phenomenon for the region of Berar in Central

India.

Table 2

A comparison of wages and prices in Berar (with decennial averages): 1870-1903

Year Standard wage Price of Jawari Wage/price exchange rate

*annas per diem *seers per rupee of jawari in seers

1870-71 4.33 18.5 5.01

1871-72 4.75 22.7 6.70

1872-73 3.75 26.3 6.14

1873-74 3.66 41.6 9.29

1874-75 3.5 52.6 11.32

1875-76 3.25 38.4 7.80

1876-77 3.33 19.2 3.96

1877-78 3.0 16.3 3.04

1878-79 3.5 13.8 3.03

1879-80 3.5 17.8 3.85

1880-81 3.0 38.4 6.98

Average 3.5 27.7 6.1

1881-82 3.0 32.2 5.99

1882-83 3.0 28.5 5.24

1883-84 3.5 25.6 5.59

1884-85 3.0 28.5 5.25

1885-86 3.0 25.0 4.60

9

1886-87 3.0 25.0 4.60

1887-88 3.0 17.2 3.22

1888-89 3.0 20.0 3.72

1889-90 3.5 22.7 4.96

1890-91 3.75 25.6 5.92

Average 3.1 25.0 4.9

1891-92 3.91 20.0 4.84

1892-93 3.91 16.6 4.02

1893-94 3.91 18.8 4.61

1894-95 3.91 22.2 5.34

1895-96 3.91 19.6 4.79

1896-97 3.16 10.4 2.04

1897-98 3.33 25.0 5.08

1898-99 3.33 23.8 4.92

1899-1900 2.58 9.8 1.58

Average 3.5 18.4 4.1 1900-01 N/A 17.9 N/A

1901-02 N/A 19.5 N/A

1902-03 N/A 22.4 N/A

*One seer = approximately 2 lbs and anna was the 16th

part of a rupee, the standard currency of

British India

Sources: Prices and Wages in India. 22

nd Issue. Compiled by the Office of the Director-General of

Commercial Intelligence. Calcutta, 1905; K. L. Datta. Report on the Enquiry in the Rise of Prices in India,

vol. II (Statistics of Prices), Calcutta: 1915; Statistical Bastracts Relating to British India, 1874-1917 (in

multi-volumes), London: printed annually; Index Numbers of Indian Prices, 1861-1926, Calcutta: 1928;

Report on the Census of Berar, 1881. Bombay: 1882; Report of the Sanitary Commissioner, Hyderabad

Assigned Districts for the year 1897, Hyderabad: 1898; Manchester Guardian, 1850-1900; General

Administration of the Hyderabad Assigned Districts, printed annually from 1855-56 to 1902-03,

Hyderabad: Residency Press; Report on the Revenue Administration of the Hyderabad Assigned Districts,

printed annually 1877-78 to 1902-03; Hyderabad: Residency Press.

Table 2 suggests that the standard cash wage rate remained stagnant at 3.5 annas per diem

while the price of staple grain jawari increased tremendously from 27.7 seers per rupee to

18.4 between 1870 and 1903. This further suggests that the labourer‟s wages failed to

keep up with the prices. The direct consequence of this was undernourishment and even

starvation in times of famine. The wage/price exchange rate of jawari also fell by a third,

causing severe economic and material hardships to the vast majority of labouring

population of central India.

10

Thus, the 19th

century famines in Central India were basically price-induced

famines that could have been avoided with timely government intervention. However,

that never happened because of the official adherence to the laissez-faire ideology of

non-interference. In fact there is even evidence of grains being exported to England and

Europe for speculative trading in international market while millions were dying of

disease and starvation in the sub-continent.27

Similarly, the problem of food shortages in

colonial Berar is associated with grain exports and high prices. It is rather appalling that

while majority of the Berar‟s population was suffering from poverty and hunger, the

region was exporting food grains. This was in fact the case even during years of drought

and famine. The following table illustrates exactly how much of food grains were

actually exported. These food grains included the staple crop jowari (millet), wheat, and

other edible grains such as gram, bajri, masur, tur, rice, urad, etc.

Table 3

Food grains and raw cotton exports from Berar: 1874-75 to 1902-03

Year Foodgrain % of foodgrains Raw cotton % of raw cotton Total

exports to total exports exports to total exports exports

in maunds* in maunds in maunds

1874-75 345,000 1,431,781 N/A

1875-76 469,000 1,054,438 N/A

1876-77 2,196,000 1,626,686 N/A

1877-78 1,509,000 1,699,737 N/A

1878-79 972,000 38.4 1,200,662 47.5 2,527,415

1879-80 250,130 16.1 1,004,398 64.8 1,549,793

1880-81 411,223 20.1 1,020,059 50.0 2,037,754

1881-82 2,011,061 45.4 1,572,052 35.5 4,421,710

1882-83 1,488,429 33.8 1,430,931 32.5 4,402,510

1883-84 847,408 28.3 1,027,785 34.3 2,990,857

1884-85 721,764 21.9 807,598 24.5 3,294,844

1885-86 1,320,721 30.7 1,278,108 29.7 4,289,640

1886-87 2,356,618 44.8 1,726,364 32.8 5,251,732

1887-88 1,519,458 43.8 921,100 26.5 3,463,158

11

1888-89 1,023,801 23.9 1,866,461 43.6 4,276,377

1889-90 580,521 15.9 1,902,429 52.3 3,635,968

1890-91 N/A N/A 3,926,000

1891-92 1,943,000 36.2 1,714,338 32.0 5,355,000

1892-93 1,067,000 28.8 1,355,420 36.6 3,701,000

1893-94 2,020,372 53.7 1,651,022 43.9 3,760,000

1894-95 235,000 8.7 1,211,933 45.0 2,691,000

1895-96 475,000 12.4 1,954,056 51.3 3,809,000

1896-97 655,000 18.5 1,827,708 51.8 3,522,000

1897-98 257,000 8.2 1,686,115 53.9 3,128,000

1898-99 500,000 8.7 3,208,228 55.8 5,747,000

1899-1900 747,000 28.6 915,157 35.0 2,609,000

1900-01 275,000 6.4 2,183,142 51.5 4,233,000

1901-02 835,000 10.6 3,830,744 48.8 7,842,000

1902-03 483,000 7.6 3,218,399 50.8 6,324,000

--------- ----- ---------- -----

Average 979,910 24.5 1,654,530 42.9

-------- ----- ---------- -----

*1 Berar maund = 82 lbs. weight

Sources: Report on the Rail and Road Borne Trade of the Hyderabad Assigned Districts, 1878-79 to 1902-03. Printed

annually at Hyderabad: Residency Government Press; and East India (Report of Famine). Appendix I: Miscellaneous

Papers Bearing Upon the Condition of the Country and People of India. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1881. p. 50;

and Central Provinces and Berar District Gazetteer: Akola District. Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1910. p. 245.

The above table clearly indicates that at any given point of time, Berar was exporting

precious food grains worth 979,910 maunds (40,176 tons). This enormous quantity was

primarily snatched from the mouths of the hungry and the poor. With the average

population of 2,637,958 persons at any given point between 1867 and 1901,28

this loss

amounted to approximately 30.4 lbs per person. According to the general administration

report of 1882-83, an average individual required 0.96 lbs of food grain per diem for

survival.29

Even if this relatively low consumption figure is applied, the surplus food

grain that was exported could have sustained the entire population of Berar for up to 31.7

days. Even in the worst of famine and drought years (1877-79; 1896-97; and 1899-1900)

a total of 2,375,509 maunds of food grains were exported out of the province. Similarly,

the people of Berar never got anything in return for the raw cotton exports that formed on

12

average 42.9% of the total exports in any given year. The colonial roads and railways

became the artery of people‟s misery. With such large quantities of grains leaving the

province, the traditional custom of storing grains in „peos‟ completely declined.30

Thus

the high grain prices and exports did not necessarily translate into increasing incomes for

peasants as Michele McAlphin and Morris D. Morris have surmised.31

Nor did it mean a

change in their material condition. In fact it led to worsening of their lives.

Vasant Kaiwar in his studies of the Deccan has suggested that the incorporation of

local economy into the world market network brought devastating famines to central

India. The encroachment of imperial policies and imposition of a colonial infrastructure

based on conditional private property in land32

and a high rate of revenue demand

undermined the traditional food security chain.33

Similarly, David Hardiman argues that

the neglect of traditional water works by the colonial state brought drought and famine to

the Deccan plateau. These water works in the form of small irrigation systems like tanks,

masonry dams, anicuts, reservoirs, lakes, ponds, canals, etc., had successfully avoided the

problem of salination and malaria by tapping water for local irrigation and daily use. In

pre-colonial times, the maintenance of these water works had been through local

communal labour financed by the state in a situation where land, grazing grounds and

surrounding forests were a common property resource of the village. The introduction of

conditional private property rights in land under colonial aegis and withdrawal of state

support led to the decline of local irrigation works.34

Not surprisingly, one of the most

acute problems during famine in Central India was that of water scarcity. Elizabeth

Whitcombe, Ira Klein, and David Gilmartin have also suggested that the British neglect

of small water works in favour of large irrigation canals were the chief cause of

13

salination, silting, leaching, disease, and famine that were triggered by a general

environmental collapse.35

P.A. Elphinstone conducted extensive survey and settlement operations in the

Deccan in 1860s and 70s. In his reports he poignantly noted the neglect of traditional

water works and the acute problem of water scarcity.36

But every subsequent colonial

official in this cotton rich region of Central India came to believe that there was no need

to develop irrigation or water works because the black cotton soil was naturally rich and

did not need much water to grow crops. A strong anti-irrigation lobby among the

officials created this myth that Berar was immune from drought and famine. Therefore

the need for a famine code or relief measures were neither felt nor devised. With this

attitude, the officials in fact refused to even acknowledge that drought, disease, and

famine related deaths were taking place.37

This denial and failure to put in place even a

semblance of infrastructure made the famine in Central India all the more devastating.

Similarly, the sanitary commissioner‟s reports actually drew a strong connection between

contaminated water and diseases like cholera, malaria, diarrhea, dysentery and smallpox,

not to mention undernourishment caused by the low calorie intake of the general mass of

population.38

Yet, no public action was forthcoming. And when serious famines did hit

the region (1877-78; 1896-97 and 1899-1900) and the state was forced to recognize it on

account of millions of deaths, the blame was put on natural causes like the failure of rains

and crops.39

However, a simple common sense query would demolish this colonialist

argument. If the region is naturally rich with black cotton soil and does not need much

water to grow crops, then how can failure of rain cause famines?

14

Radhika Ramasubban in her work on epidemic diseases and medicine in colonial

India has argued that government sanitation measures were primarily geared towards

protecting British cantonments and civil lines where most of the European population

was concentrated. This „enclavist‟ nature of colonial medicine failed to protect the vast

majority of the people not just during famines but also in ordinary times.40

And the

railways took plague and cholera along with grains to every nook and corner of Central

India from the port city of Bombay.41

However, Irfan Habib states that the dark

underlying cause of all famines in British India was the intense poverty of its masses.

And this suggests a deep relationship between the colonial political economy of

exploitation and the material condition of the masses.42

As already mentioned, the extensive land survey operations conducted in Berar in

1860s and 70s were designed for revision every thirty years. The first revision took place

in 1898-99, but unfortunately most of the revision settlement reports have either been lost

or yet to be found. However, only one of the report survived through time and this report

was done in 1900 for the Basim taluka43

in Basim district by a one F. W. Francis, the

Director of Land Records and Agriculture. In this report there is one extremely

interesting data that shows a rather rare comparison in the people‟s standard of living

during these two time periods twenty-five years apart. It is worthwhile here to reproduce

the comparative data:

Table 4

Comparative statistics from the first settlement to the revision settlement in Basim

taluka of Berar in Central India (some parameters of the standard of living in an

agrarian society): 1872-73 and 1898-99

Subject 1872-73 1898-99

15

No. of houses per head population 0.25 0.17

No. of agricultural cattle per head

of population 0.43 0.31

No. of cows and buffaloes per head

of population 0.60 0.42

No. of sheep and goats per head of

population 0.08 0.11

No. of carts per head of population 0.04 0.03

No. of wells per head of population 0.03 0.02

No. of cultivated acres head of population 5.7 3.1

Source: Basin Taluka Settlement Report, Prepared bh F.W. Francis, Director of Land Records and

Agriculture, Hyderabad Assigned Districts, Chikalda (April 25, 1900), p. 4.

The above table is just for the taluka of Basim. However, it certainly suggests a trend for

the period and perhaps for the province as a whole. It should be noted that Basim is a

hilly jungle taluk and if the situation was declining in the hill districts, then in the plain

districts where cultivation is more extensive, the intensity of decline would be perhaps

even greater. And considering the severity of the famines in the closing decades of the

19th

century, it may well be that the standard of living was declining in the entire

province. For example, the number of houses per capita declined along with cattle heads,

carts, wells, and cultivated acreage. This certainly suggests an overall decline in the

standard of living. Decline in the number of wells and cultivated acres surely led to acute

water and food availability decline throughout the province as droughts and famines

periodically devastated the region. Widespread drought and famine related disasters are

reported in the colonial documents for the years: 1862; 1865-66; 1868; 1871; 1875; 1878;

1883-84; 1885; 1886-87; 1887-88; 1896-97; and 1899-1900 in which diseases decimated

cattle and people without distinction.44

So even though only three famines were officially

recognized, there were many other years when drought and famine conditions existed but

were never recognized by the colonial state. And most of the deaths in fact took place

during these officially non-drought and famine years.

16

On the Consequences of Famine:

The consequences of these famines were quite dramatic. South Asian scholars like

Kinsley Davis, Tim Dyson and others who study demography and productivity agree that

between 1870 and 1920 the life expectancy fell by 20%, population declined by 10% and

net cropped area decreased by 12%.45

It can also be argued that although the colonial

state reluctantly recognized only three famines in the late 19th

century, yet drought like

conditions prevailed in general throughout Central India taking a heavy toll of human and

cattle lives.

Despite extracting millions of pounds in revenues, the state developed cold feet

when it came to spending on public relief. The government was always worried about

commensurate returns on its investments. And expenditure on famine relief was

considered wasteful and uneconomic. In fact it was even looked down upon in official

circles. Keeping in line with the imperial ideology, every effort was made to discourage

people from seeking relief. The relief camps were not only hard to reach but were in fact

deliberately kept in remote locations and beyond the reach of the physically weakened

population. And those who somehow managed to reach these camps soon found that the

conditions were more horrifying then the villages they had left behind. The sanitation

was often very poor and prison like conditions prevailed while the relief camps gained

notoriety as centers of epidemic diseases. It will be worth repeating here that all

government relief was conditional upon heavy work in colonial projects on which both

17

cash and kind wages were deliberately kept low.46

And in general, the state did not show

much interest in famine relief.

But even in this weakened state, there was resistance to what Partha Chatterjee

has called the „colonial [in]difference.‟47

There are innumerable recorded instances of

grain riots, attacks on grain trains, protest against high prices and grain exports, hoarding

and speculative trading, house trespass, bazaar unrest, offence against property, raids on

standing debt crops held by moneylenders, raids on government establishments,

robberies, thefts, incendiaries, and dacoities.48

Some of them like the Deccan Riots in

Poona in 1870s became symbols of bigger protests launched by the nationalist

organizations like the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and the Indian National Congress.49

Coda for the Victims of Famine in Colonial India:

In conclusion then, the laissez-faire ideology of the British Empire prevented state

intervention in times of calamities such as droughts and famines. Western technology

like the railways took grains out and brought famine even to surplus areas. This paper

argues that the famines were caused not so much by the failure of rains but by artificial

price inflations driven by the colonial policies and export trade. In an oppressive

situation of colonial subjection and imperial domination over forests, grazing lands, and

agriculture, the society remained socially and economically involuted. But most

significantly it got exposed to droughts and famines that mercilessly decimated millions

in the late 19th

century. However, even in their weakened state the people resisted to

their last breadth and gave birth the Indian nationalism.

Endnotes:

18

1 Mike Davis. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third

World. London: Verso, 2001.

2 See Jim Blaut. The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and

Euro-centric History. New York: The Guilford Press, 1993.

3 See Sheldon Watts. Epidemics and History: Disease, Power and Imperialism. New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

4 See Jared Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New

York: Norton, 1997; David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are

So Rich and Some So Poor (New York: Norton, 1998).

5 See John Caldwell. “Malthus and the Less Developed World: The Pivotal Role of

India.” Population and Development Review 24:4 (Dec. 1998).

6 See Eric Stokes. The English Utilitarians and India. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1959.

7 See B. M. Bhatia. Famines in India, 1850-1945. Bombay, 1963; and Mike Davis. Late

Victorian Holocausts. Chs. 1 & 5.

8 See Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen. The Political Economy of Hunger: Selected Essays.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995; and Amartya Sen. Poverty and Famines: An

Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

9 See the works of H.D. Sankhalia. The Prehistory and protohistory of India and

Pakistan. Poona, 1974; D.D. Kosambi. Ancient India: A History of Its Culture and

Civilization. New York: Pantheon Book, 1965; Romila Thapar. A History of India,

Volume 1. London: Penguin Books, 1990; D. N. Jha, Ancient India in Historical Outline.

New Delhi: Manohar, 1998; R.S. Sharma. Indian Feudalism, circa A.D. 300-1200.

19

Delhi, 1980; and Irfan Habib. The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707.

Bombay, 1963.

10 Sumit Guha. Environment and Ethnicity in India, 1200-1991. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1999.

11 Nicholas Dirks. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

12 Laxman D. Satya. “Colonial Encroachment and Popular Resistance: Land Survey and

Settlement Operations in Berar: 1860-1877.” Agricultural History 72: 1 (Winter 1998):

55-76.

13 Central Provinces District Gazetteers: Amraoti District (Bombay: Caxton Works,

1911), pp. 106-111; and Central Provinces and Berar District Gazetteers: Akola District

(Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1910), pp. 231-251.

14 Neeladri Bhattacharya. “Pastoralists in a Colonial World,” in David Arnold and

Ramachandra Guha, ed., Nature, Culture, Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental

History of South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. 49-85.

15 Irfan Habib. Essays in Indian History: Towards a Marxist Perception. New Delhi:

Tulika, 1995. Pp. 296-335.

16 See Mahesh Rangarajan. Fencing the Forest: Conservation and Ecological Change in

India’s Central Provinces, 1860-1914. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.

17 Neil Charlesworth. Peasants and Imperial Rule: Agriculture and Agrarian Society in

the Bombay Presidency:1850-1935. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

18 Ramachandra Guha. “The Prehistory of Community Forestry in India.” Environmental

History 6: 2 (Apr 2001): 213-238.

20

19

Vanita Damodaran. “Famine in a Forest Tract: Ecological Change and he Causes of the

1897 Famine in Chota Nagpur – North India.” In Richard Grove, et. al. eds. Nature and

the Orient: The Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia. Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 1998; and D.E.U. Baker. Colonialism in an Indian Hinterland: The

Central Provinces, 1820-1920. Delhi, 1993.

20 Ram Guha. “An environmental history debate: The making of the 1878 Forest Act.”

The Indian Economic and Social History Review 27:1 (1990): 65-84.

21 Indira Munshi Saldhana. “Colonial Forest Regulation and Collective Resistance: 19

th

Century Thana District.” In Richard Grove, et. al. ed. Nature and the Orient: The

Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia.

22 B. Bhatia. Famines in India, 1850-1945. Bombay, 1963; and Ramachandra Guha and

Madhav Gadgil. This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India. Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 1996.

23 See Bipan Chandra. The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India:

Economic Policies of Indian Nationalist Leadership, 1885-1905. New Delhi, 1966; Sumit

Sarkar. Modern India, 1885-1947. Delhi: McMillan, 1983; and Amiya Bagchi. Private

Investments in India, 1900-1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.

24 See William Digby. Prosperous British India. London, 1901.

25 See Amartya Sen. “Famine Mortality: A Study of the Bengal Famine of 1943.” In E.

Hobsbawm, et. al. eds. Peasants in History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.

26 See Laxman D. Satya. Cotton and Famine in Berar: 1850-1900. Delhi: Manohar,

1997. Ch. 7; and Mike Davis. Late Victorian Holocausts. P. 310.

21

27

Mike Davis. Late Victorian Holocausts. P. 11; and Michael Watts. Silent Violence:

Food, Famine and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria. Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1983.

28 Tim Dyson. “The Population History of Berar since 1881 and its potential wider

significance.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 24:2 (1989): 168.

29 Report on the Administration of the Hyderabad Assigned Districts for the year 1882-

83. Hyderabad: Residency Government Press, 1883. para 12.

30 The Report of the Indian Famine Commission, 1898. London: Her Majesty‟s

Stationery Office, 1898. p. 363.

31 Michele McAlphin. Subject to Famine: Food Crisis and Economic Change in Western

India, 1860-1920. New Jersey, 1983; and for a critique of McAlphin see, Currie, Kate,

“Famines in 19th

Century Indian History: A Materialist Alternative to Ecological

Reductionism,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 16:4 (1986): 475-490.

32 The colonial condition being, the regular payment of land revenue under the threat of

seizure and court auction for default.

33 See Vasant Kaiwar “The Colonial State, Capital and the Peasantry in Bombay

Presidency.” Modern Asian Studies 28:4 (1994): 793-832.

34 David Hardiman. “Small-Dam Systems of the Sahyadris.” See David Arnold and

Ramachandra Guha, eds., Nature, Culture, and Imperialism: Essays on the

Environmental History of South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

35 Whitcombe, Elizabeth, “The Environmental Costs of Irrigation in British India:

Waterlogging, Salinity and Malaria,” in David Arnold and Ramachandra Guha, eds.,

Nature, Culture, and Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia.

22

Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998: 237-259; and Klein, Ira. “Development and death:

Reinterpreting malaria, economics and ecology in British India.” The Indian Economic

and Social History Review 38:2 (2001): 147-179; and Gilmartin, David, “Scientiific

Empire and Imperial Science: Colonialism and Irrigation Technology in the Indus Basin,”

Journal of Asian Studies 53:4 (November 1994): 1127-1149.

36 Elphinstone wrote several settlement reports as survey officer. Here only two most

important once are mentioned, Mehkur Taluka Settlement Report, no. 1098 of 1868; and

Morsi Taluka Settlement Report, No. 563 of 1871.

37 Laxman D. Satya. Cotton and Famine in Berar: 1850-1900. Ch. 7.

38 Sanitary Commissioner‟s Reports were published annually between 1873 and 1902

under the title: Report of the Sanitary Commissioner of the Hyderabad Assigned

Districts, for the year…..published by the British Resident at Hyderabad.

39 Famine commission reports and every colonial document of the 19

th century repeated

this refrain. For example, see J. A. Crawford. Report on the Famine in the Hyderabad

Assigned Districts in the years 1899 and 1900, vol. 1. Nagpur: Chambers Press, 1901; F.

S. Bullock. Narrative of the Famine in the Hyderabad Assigned Districts during the year

1896-97. Hyderabad: Residency Printing Office, 1898; and Report of the Indian Famine

Commission. Vol. III. Evidence in Reply to Inquiries of the Commission. Ch. 1 –

Condition of the Country and People. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1880.

40 See Ramasubban, Radhika. “Imperial health in British India, 1857-1900.” In Roy

Macleod and Milton Lewis, ed., Disease, Medicine and Empire: Perspectives on Western

Medicine and the Experience of European Expansion. New York: Routledge, 1988.

23

41

Catanach, I. J. “Plague and the tensions of empire: India 1896-1918.” In David

Arnold, ed., Imperial Medicine and indigenous societies. Manchester: Manchester

University Press: 1988; McNeill, William H. Plagues and Peoples. New York:

Doubleday, 1977; Anil Kumar. Medicine and the Raj: British Medical Policy in India:

1835-1911. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1998; and Ira Klein. “Development and

death: Reinterpreting malaria, economics and ecology in British India.” The Indian

Economic and Social History Review 38:2 (2001): 147-179.

42 Irfan Habib. Essays in Indian History. Pp. 296-335.

43 A taluka is a sub-division of a district and the smallest unit of colonial administration

above the village.

44 See Imperial Gazetteer of India, vol. VII. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901. p. 397.

45 Kinsley Davis. Population of India and Pakistan. Princeton: Princeton Unviersity

Press, 1951; Irfan Habib. “Studying a Colonial Economy – Without Perceiving

Colonialism.” Modern Asian Studies 19:3 (1985); Sumit Guha, ed. Growth Stagnation or

Decline? Agricultural Productivity in British India. Delhi, 1992; and Tim Dyson, ed.

India’s Historical Demography. London: Curzon Press, 1989.

46 See J. A. Crawford. Report on the Famine in the Hyderabad Assigned Districts in the

years 1899 and 1900, vol. 1.; F. S. Bullock. Narrative of the Famine in the Hyderabad

Assigned Districts during the year 1896-97; and Report of the Indian Famine

Commission. Vol. III. Evidence in Reply to Inquiries of the Commission. Ch. 1 –

Condition of the Country and People.

47 Partha Chatterjee. Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Post Colonial Histories.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

24

48

Laxman D. Satya. Cotton and Famine in Berar, 1850-1900. Ch. 7; and Mike Davis.

Late Victorian Holocausts. Pt. II & IV.

49 See Ravinder Kumar. “The Deccan Riots of 1875.” The Journal of Asian Studies 24: 4

(August1965): 613-635.